1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of this invention relate generally to processors. More particularly, an embodiment of the present invention relates to having an external device-based prefetching mechanism.
2. Description of Related Art
Networks enable computers and other devices to communicate. For example, networks can carry data representing video, audio, e-mail, and so forth. Communicating on a network imposes overhead on a processor. As network speeds increase beyond 1 gigabit per second, network overhead grows significantly and consumes much of the available capability of the processor. One specific source of network processing overhead results when a processor incurs a cache miss. A cache miss can cause a processor to lose hundreds of cycles of otherwise useful processing time and thus, decreases performance and inefficiency.
A number of approaches have been used to decrease networking overhead. One approach has been to offload network protocol processing onto a network interface card (NIC). This approach is costly and complex compared to traditional NIC devices. Another approach is to design “memory aware” protocol implementations that attempt to avoid unnecessary processor cache misses. However, such protocol implementations are complex and finely tuned, making them difficult to maintain and adapt.